Once upon a time there was a tale of two days. Day one, Saturday, August 18, 2007.

I got an early morning call from Ted Alexander. He should be famous across the country but, like many other people who should be known across the country, he isn't. For the most part, he seems satisfied with his life. And for still being able to play the piano four or more hours a day, a gift that I believe he was born with.

The reason for his obscurity is that he moved to Denver in the mid-fifties. He had studied classical piano and played in various movie bands with some of the best musicians in Hollywood in the forties. But in a short time he had grown tired of the competition and the lifestyle of Hollywood. He and his wife traveled the western part of the United States and he came to Denver, bought a house, and, as his name quickly blanketed Denver, he began to attract the best students in what was then the Denver area. I was one of those students, but to be entirely honest, far less talented than most of the students who began taking lessons from Ted.

Written in the assignment book that each student provided is the date I took my first lesson with Ted. August 29, 1956. I took lessons while going to college, not really having time to digest them, on a hit and miss basis into the early sixties.

Approximately a year and a half ago, I connected with Ted again and started going to the quarterly music sessions he holds in his basement, always on a Sunday evening, a tradition that he has held over from the 1950s. And it's the same house that he's owned for five and a half decades.

I try to get together with him for lunch several times a year, and the Saturday call was to see if I would be available that day to go to lunch with him. I was. So we spent a pleasant hour at his favorite restaurant. It came up that his birthday was the following Saturday, August 25, when he will be 90 years old and I told him my birthday was the next day, Sunday, which would be my big 70.

Day two, Sunday, August 19, 2007. Nancy Jones, a friend I've known for 30-plus years, called me about taking in a movie or two. She pulled up in front of my apartment and I got into her car. But it was more difficult for me than getting into Ted's car the day before. From this experience, I have to come to one conclusion. Something happened overnight between the last day I was 69 and the first day I was 70.

It's sort of like a magic spell. One day I was in the Golden Years while the next day I had passed them. I am now Beyond the Golden Years. And sure enough, by Monday it took me five extra minutes to get out of bed, ten extra minutes to eat my breakfast, and a couple of trips to the front door before I figured out that the newspaper isn't delivered on Monday.

As for the movies, Nancy and I watched Hairspray, the latest version of the John Waters movie that we had originally watched together in early 1988, the version that was in Smell-O-Vision if I remember right, and also the movie Stardust. I was disappointed by Stardust as I thought it was going to be a bio about Hoagie Carmichael, who died more than 25 years ago. His song Stardust wasn't even in the movie.